Tod Desmond's video: Bertrand Russell: The Value of Philosophy

In this video I examine excerpts from Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy. I focus on Russell's claim that the value of philosophy lay not in answers to the questions it asks--about which certain knowledge seems to be impossible--but, rather, in keeping the fundamental philosophical questions and the questioning spirit alive. We cannot have definite knowledge of which answers are true, but we can have definite knowledge of the possible answers to definite questions that inquisitive humans invariably ask. This is the only way we can liberate ourselves from the feverish prison of instinctive desires that shackle the "practical" man in the confined circle of personal interests, including immediate family and friends. Russell concludes by saying the mind is rendered great by contemplating the universe, and becomes thereby "capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good."